Friday, February 29, 2008

Prog 417

Rogue Trooper's strategy for finding the antigen that will cure his bio-chipped buddies seems to be the same as the one he used when searching for the Traitor General on Nu Earth. This is where he walks around a lot in the hope that something turns up. It worked for him in the past, why shouldn't it work again? The war continues as before only this time Horst inhabitants have been conscripted; the Norts have the bat people, and the Southers the insectoids.

Jose Ortiz is the new primary art robot on the thrill. His style seems to sit mid way between what I think of as the European look and the more American influenced work that the art robots based in the UK use. Ortiz draws this strip big and I've always liked that.

Definitive Rogue Trooper art robot, Cam Kennedy, has been moved over to Judge Dredd. Tharg has been talking so enthusiastically about his move for several Nerve Centres that I imagine other art robots feeling a little inferior as a consequence. Currently, Kennedy's big premier Dredd strip is running, Sunday Night Fever, in which Ruby Foulclough outburst in a bar leads to the death of 13, 000 citizens in a job riot. Tharg was right to get excited about Kennedy's art here; it is the best I've seen him produce for 2000 AD so far. Undoubtedly influenced by Mike McMahon, it's filled with rich panel design, bold city-cityscapes and excellent characterisation.

6 Comments:

I started reading regularly in a few progs time - the Zarjaz 8th birthday issue. Consequently, for me, Jose Ortiz is *the* Rogue Trooper artist. His Rogue, as he walks and walks across Horst, really carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. Rogue is tired, weary, he's hardly even angry any more. Ortiz made Horst look like a right old shit-hole too - nothing was clean, the sun never quite seemed to shine. No one else ever seemed to catch it in quite the same way. Even Will Simpson, years down the line, in his spectacular colour work couldn't shift Ortiz from the top Rogue spot.

Just realised the Zarjaz 8th birthday issue was 416, and you were just too polite to say. In my (weak) defense, while 416 was the first prog I bought, I wasn't able to buy it regularly until three or four months later. I also backfilled a bit, so my memory is clearly failing. I'm nearly 39 you know.

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Where I endeavour to read every issue, or progs, of 2000 AD and appropriate associated comics, specials and annuals published between number one and 1, 188. Will this experiment result in, as Tharg the Mighty has warned of many times in his editorials over the years, thrill power overload or will I, like Morgan Spurlock in the documentary Supersize Me, end up being sick a lot and twenty five pounds heavier? Only this blog will tell.